Digital cameras and photography have become an important part of everyday life for countless people. Digital cameras are being included in more and more devices and the quality of the images they capture is improving at a rapid pace. Aside from dedicated cameras, devices such as personal computers (PCs), mobile phones, tablet computers, laptops and electronic goggles are often equipped with some sort of image capturing apparatus. All of this technological integration presents ever more opportunities for utilizing imaging data for a variety of different purposes.
One interesting area of technology that has benefited significantly from digital cameras has been in the field of portable devices, such as tablet computers and mobile phones. Many phones and tablets today have multiple cameras integrated therein. For example, a smart phone often includes a rear-facing high resolution camera and a front-facing lower resolution camera. While such cameras have been getting smaller in size, they conventionally have significant size requirements when compared with other electronic components of the portable computing device. For example, the high resolution rear-facing camera may often be thicker than both the battery and the touch screen display. Many manufacturers have been seeking to make the camera thinner and cheaper, while still satisfying the resolution requirements expected by today's users.